Google Cloud Platform’s Continuing Momentum Can’t Be Ignored

Posted on August 29, 2017 by MattU

Last week, marketing automation juggernaut Marketo announced that they’re moving all of their automation software to Google Cloud Platform as well as forming joint partnerships within Google’s own workplace software platform. This marks another flagship customer choosing the forwarding-thinking capabilities that GCP offers.This has been a trend for the past couple years, since VMware founder Diane Greene took a leading role in Google’s cloud business. Evernote, Spotify, Niantic (Pokemon Go), Coca-Cola, Disney, and now Marketo are just some of the recent big names that have come on board in recent years.While AWS is still the current market leader among cloud vendors, there are several reasons why GCP has enjoyed so much momentum recently:

Infrastructure – From a technical perspective, GCP’s underlying infrastructure has always been without equal. They are one of the few vendors who run a global private fiber network. This means that when data travels between Google’s data centers, it does so on their own high speed network, not over public channels. Additionally, the data centers that power GCP are the exact same that power Google’s own high-speed services.

Big Data and Machine Learning – I can’t think of anyone who does big data and machine learning better than Google, period, and other companies are starting to take notice. Box is now using GCP for their image management abilities, and companies like Fastly are turning to Google’s BigQuery for insanely fast big data analytics.

Moving beyond IaaS – Managed PaaS offerings such as Google App Engine have been shown to dramatically decrease administrative overhead while allowing applications to scale to ‘Google scale’ effortlessly. Last fall, Super Mario Run launched its mobile game to a global audience. Building the incredibly popular game on Google App Engine made it possible.

Renewed focus on business partnerships – While GCP has always been an incredibly powerful platform, AWS has usually done a better job of forming key business partnerships. The addition of Diane Greene to their cloud team has made a powerful impact on shifting momentum to Google’s side.

This renewed momentum combined with high tech engineering is why Ms. Greene has said their goal is to overtake AWS by the year 2022. By combining their superior technological infrastructure with new focus on partnerships, they just might. The question then becomes: Will you be prepared to take advantage of this shift? At Linux Academy, we’ve just opened up our first course for preparing for the Google Cloud Architect certification, which is poised for high demand in the next few years. Your journey to prepare for ‘what’s next’ begins here.